Babyshower Blues
by HydeLuver
Summary: Eight years later, Jackie and Hyde discuss what might have been.


**Author's Note:** _I know I've been late updating the other story I have going on but it was like 1:30am when I decided to write this little one-shot. It took about an hour to write and it's loosely inspired on my own relationship at the moment so I'm a bit on edge about it lol but I think it turned out alright. Anyway, it's about 2:40am now so I'll be heading to bed. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!_

The Forman's backyard is filled with a bustle of people, all loudly moving about Donna and Eric, asking if they knew the gender of the baby yet, or what names they had come up with for the baby. Hyde watches as Kitty hustles around the yard with a drink tray while Red trails slowly behind her, muttering curses at the people invading his home, with his own tray of dogs in the over.

"Oh Steven sweetie, would you mind going into the house and grabbing a few more trays. Be careful with the cheese dip, it's still a little hot" Kitty quickly tells him as she passes by where he is sitting. Before Hyde can object, she is already by the next table and Red has offered him a menacing look which leaves him with no other choice but to grab his beer can and walk inside to assist in the passing out of food.

"Hey Hyde," Eric says before Hyde can reach the sliding door, "can you grab me a beer while you're in there?" he asks.

"Get it yourself Forman, you're not the one who's pregnant, or are you?" Hyde jokes.

"Oh come on Hyde, Donna won't let me leave her side man. She says if she has to suffer, so do I. Man, I thought my work was done, you know. I did my part" Eric says.

"Forman, you're married to Donna man, your part hasn't even started" Hyde tells his friend. Suddenly, Hyde's words seem to dawn on Eric.

"Shit, you're right. Get me two beers then" he says as he scurries back to his wive's side.

Hyde mumbles under his breath about Eric getting his own damn beer and finally makes it to the sliding door.

"Steven!" he hears a shrill voice coming from across the room and is immediately floored when he sees Jackie standing there. It had been over eight years since he's last seem Jackie. She had taken a job up in Madison and then another one in Chicago. She had remained in contact with Donna, Fez and Kelso. They would briefly speak to each other over the holidays when she called the Forman's and he'd be over for the occasion.

"Jackie, wow hi" he said, still standing in the same spot. She rushed over to him and draped her arms around his neck.

"How are you?" she says excitedly, taking him by surprise.

"I'm good, you?" he says trying not to stumble over his words. He knew she had received an invitation to Donna's baby shower and would show up at some point, but he hadn't fully mentally prepared himself for the moment he'd see her again. And damn did she still look good.

"Look at you, you look exactly the same" she says as she steps back to look at him.

"So do you, well a little different but mostly the same" he says trying to take in as much of her as possible without seeming creepy.

"Where's Donna? Is she outside?" she asks immediately.

"Yeah, come" Hyde says leading her out into the backyard and completely disregarding the trays and beer he was supposed to get.

Out into the yard, she spots Donna and leaves his side. Hyde watches as she makes her way through the crowd with ease and immediately falls back into old habits of joking and talking with her friends, as though it hadn't been eight years since they'd last seen each other. How the hell was he the only one in shock to see her standing here. How is no one else as affected by her presence as he is?

For the next half hour or so, he watches her socialize from the corner of his eye. She goes to almost everyone at the shower engaging in small talk or quick conversations. She spends a while speaking with the Formans and Brooke and Betsy who are waiting for Kelso to get off work. "Betsy you're so beautiful" he hears her say to their god daughter and he smiles. She is just as doting to the girl as she was when it was first announced that they won the godparent title. She had been so proud about their superiority as a couple then.

After Jackie had made her rounds, she finally managed to make her way towards him. She stands in front of him over by the porch and offers him a big smile. "Still drink beer I see" she says to him.

"I do. What is that you're drinking?" he asks.

"I'm not exactly sure. One of Mrs. Forman's concoction, it's surprisingly good. Want to taste it?" she offers bringing her cup close to his face.

Hyde shakes his head and smiles, "no thanks." They spend a few minutes having small talk, filling each other in on what's been going on over the last few years. She tells him about her work at the station where she is now responsible for recruiting new talent and oversees some of the production work as she prepares to produce a show soon.

"Wow that's great Jackie" he says, genuinely happy for her.

"What about you, what have you been up to?"

"Still at Grooves. Got a few more store opened so managing those. Keeps me busy" he tells her noticing how non-exciting his life sounds compared to hers.

"That's great Steven" she says enthusiastically.

They continue to talk for a bit longer. Hyde watches as she takes a moment to look around the yard at the decorations, familiar and unfamiliar faces...anything besides him. He can't help but smile at the fact that, after all these years, her mannerisms are still the same. The way she takes a sip from her drips, with her pinky barely touching the glass, the way her nose scrunches up at the initial taste of alcohol. He notices that her eyes still half-close as she savors the liquid, as though she is enjoying every drop of it. He has always appreciated how present she is, even when she's merely drinking.

"Can I say something that might make you a little uncomfortable?" he suddenly blurts out with a half-smile as his right eyebrow rises up.

Jackie turns to him, intrigued as to what he could possibly have to ask her. "Oh? What could you have to say that would make me uncomfortable?" she says jokingly.

Hyde's smile expands wider. "You sure you want to hear it?"

"Absolutely" she tells him.

"Well, you were the one who got away" he says quickly before he loses his nerve. In the moment leading up to him actually saying the word out loud, since she first walked through the doors, he'd been thinking it. It had been such a long time before they were together and there had been so many girls come and gone since, some more serious than others but none as serious as her. For a while, as he's watched his friends marry off one at a time, he couldn't help but wonder what the hell was wrong with him that he couldn't just do the same. He was successful and had grown to be a fairly decent person, in comparison to his teenage self anyway, so why not him? The more he tried to settle down with someone, the more he found wrong with the relationship. One girl, the one that got closest to getting him down the aisle, had eventually grown too needy for him. After every wedding they attended together, she pushed for a bigger commitment. Ironically, that had also been the case with Jackie, but she hadn't seem so needy at the time, or maybe he had just done a good job at blocking her out when she spoke.

Jackie smiles and shakes her head before taking another sip of her drink. "You let me get away" she says flatly, her smile slightly diminishing.

Hyde nods his head, "I never was too smart was I?" he says jokingly.

Jackie lets out a light laugh which eases the bit of tension that followed his statement. "That is a pretty big understatement I'd say."

"Have you thought about it, what would happen had we stayed together?" he asks her. Now that he was being up front with her, he wanted to lay it all out there. For over eight years, he's wondered what would have happened had Sam not walked through the door that fateful day. Or what would have happened had he gone after Jackie and tried to work things out with her. Would he be married to her with a few kids running around? Part of him likes to think that things would have worked out for them and they'd be fulfilled, but a bigger part of him tried desperately to ruin those thoughts because it was what he wanted now and even thinking that meant that he would have to take accountability for screwing up his life.

"Not for a very long time, no" she replies much to his dismay.

"I've been thinking about it a lot lately. Well, since Donna told me you would be coming today" he tells her. He takes a gulp of his own drink and looks to where said friend was sitting, her belly being touched and rubbed by every older person in the room. Hyde internally smiled because he figured how annoyed Donna probably was and how hard it must be for her to put on a happy face for them all.

"What do you think about exactly?" Jackie asks, now very much interested in what he imagines their life together might have been like. It surprises her that he's the one who has been thinking about that because she hasn't even considered it since a few weeks after Sam walked in. Actually, she would be lying if she said she didn't get her hopes up when Sam left but she quickly talked herself out of those because she would not be explaining to her children how their father had drunkenly married a stripper.

"Honestly? I see us at Grooves" he says.

"At Grooves, oh how romantic" she jokes and causes him to laugh.

"You're sitting on a stool behind the counter and I'm next to you and we're watching our children sitting on the couch listening to records, probably the Stones. We'd be sitting there quietly, just watching them, not paying attention to the other people in the store and then we'd look at each other and smile. We wouldn't have to say anything because we'd both just know" he says and stops.

Jackie eyes him, speechless as to how vivid his vision of what their lives would have been like and at how much she loves that vision. "Know what?" she says in a low, raspy voice.

"That were would never be as happy as we would be in that moment" he says. The two of them stare at each other for a moment before Jackie brings her hands to her cheeks and feels how hot they are. "You were right, I am a little uncomfortable now" she laughs.

Hyde smiles, "can't say I didn't warn you."

"It sounds lovely, your vision of it" she admits. She breaks eye contact and looks into her purse for her lipstick and compact mirror.

"Yeah" Hyde says. He looks away as Jackie re-applies her lipstick.

"It would have been nice. I always tend to look back at our relationship and it seemed really great-" she begins.

"Until it wasn't" he interrupts her and looks into her eyes.

Jackie shrugs, "I like to remember the nicer parts better. Steven, we were kids back them. I realized as I got older how crazy I was to have asked for everything I was asking for from you. There was no way we would have made it then had we actually gotten married. You knew that but I just couldn't accept it. All I saw was that you weren't willing to commit to me-"

"I was committed to you Jackie" he says, interrupting her again.

"Until you weren't" she says.

"Yeah...until I wasn't."

"This may sound crazy, but I'm glad Sam came into the picture now" Jackie tells him.

"You're right, it does sound crazy. Why?" Hyde asks her. How the hell could Sam possibly have been a good thing for them? Hell, she was barely a good thing for him.

"She was exactly what we needed to put a stop to where we were heading."

"Jackie...what exactly do you think would have happened if we had stayed together?" Hyde asks, curious about why her perception of their would-have-been future was so different from his own.

"I see us in the basement, with all of our friends and we're all sitting around watching television not saying much, drinking a few beers and laughing once in a while at whatever was on the screen" she says to him.

"That doesn't sound so bad. That sounds like what we always did" Hyde asks, confused as to why she would think they wouldn't work out if they were just following their routine.

"Right, except that that's what I see all the time. We'd be stuck doing the exact same thing while the world goes on outside without us. Everything that you've accomplished without me, what I've accomplished without you..those things wouldn't have happened" she tells him firmly.

"How do you know that? They could have happened" he says.

"No, because we'd have settled for the same routine we always had. Everything I've done has been because I've had to, because I didn't have you around anymore. I'm proud of it Steven, and I'm proud of you."

Hyde nods his head but looks away from her. Every little thing she has accomplished has been by her own merit. He hadn't contributed to anything in her life, except pieces of her past. He was her past, despite how many ways he envisions them happen or whatever hope springs up at the mere sight of her, he's her past.

"I'm proud of you too. I have to be don't I?" he says unsure as to why he added the last part.

Jackie frowns at him. "You don't have to be if you don't mean it."

"I mean it. I am proud of you" he says.

"I appreciate it Steven. It means more to me than you know that you're proud of me" she says smiling.

"We were really young weren't we" he says, more a statement than a question.

"Young and stupid" she says laughing.

"Can I uh, tell you something else?" he asks.

"Will it make me uncomfortable again?" she says, her tone lighthearted.

"Probably" he says with a smirk.

"Shoot" she says. As she says this, he is instantly transported to the moment in the Forman's kitchen, during Veteran's Day, when he was trying so hard to convince Mrs. Forman that he in fact did not like Jackie.

"I want to know you" he says. Jackie furrows her forehead.

"You want to know me? You do know me Steven, what do you mean?"

"When I thought about you, before today, I pictured this bubbly eighteen year old who would not stop yapping her mouth about how much she loved me and how we would have kids and a house and we'd eat breakfast every morning, though I would have to make it because you wouldn't go near an egg. That's how I thought about you just this morning, but you're not her. You're not that girl anymore. So I want to know you" he explains, a subtle desperation in his voice. He wasn't okay with being someone from her past. He needed more. Now that he's seen her, touched her, talked to her...he needed to be more.

Jackie smiles and lifts her hand up to caress his bearded cheek. She lets her fingers gently make their way into his curly beard and feel the warmth of his skin underneath. "Part of me is still her" she answers.

"I want to know more than part of you" Hyde replies.

Jackie brings her hand down slowly. "Why?"

"Because, I don't think our story's finished just yet" he says as he reaches for her hand and brings it up to his lips. He kisses the palm of her hand which takes her back to the many times he did that when they were alone in his bedroom in the basement. He'd told her once, in a rare moment of expressing his love for her, that his affection for her were as close as her fingertips and he would kiss every single one of the tips of her fingers and she can feel, at this moment, her body tingling at the sensation of his lips.

"No? What's missing?" she says, her voice just above a whisper.

"How about we find out together?" he asks her. He doesn't want to create an expectation that may scare her away, even though he knows what he would want their ending to be.

"So, you want to date me?" she says flirtatiously. She jokingly bats her eyelashes excessively and turns her face shyly away from him.

Hyde laughs and squeezes her hand lightly. "I would like that" he says.

"You know, Chicago is a bit of a drive from Point Place."

"It is, but it's worth the trip" he tells her which makes her blush. Hyde brings both his hands up to her cheeks and brings his lips to her forehead where he places a light kiss.

"I think it will be" Jackie smiles.


End file.
